Horror and embarrassment rose swiftly. Why didn’t I figure this out the first night he stopped by? I took a step back, bumping into the counter. Once upon a time something great and damn near magical, but now we just had years, a hundred what-might-have-beens between us, pity and remorse. That was it.
A pink flush crawled up my neck and splashed across my cheeks. That look crept into those beautiful eyes. The same I’d seen before. I couldn’t deal with it. I pushed away from the counter, then hurried around it, snatching up my purse. “Thank you for dinner,” I said, not meeting his stare. “It was amazing—”
“What?” Cole barked out a short laugh. “I didn’t want to have this dinner with you because I feel sorry for you. Is that what you think tonight is about?” He thrust his hand through his messy hair. “Seriously?”
“—and I’m glad we got the chance to catch up,” I continued, swallowing down the sudden knot in the back of my throat.
His hands closed into fists at his sides. “I don’t know why you think that I had you come over for dinner because—”
“Why wouldn’t that make sense? You know what happened. God, you more than anyone know what happened,” I said, my hand tightening on my purse. “We can’t sit and eat dinner, pretend like there hasn’t been ten years between us.”
His eyes flared. “I’m not pretending that.”
“And we can’t . . .” I said, sucking in a sharp breath as my chest burned. In the back of my head, I knew I was being too hard on this situation, on him, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. “We can’t pretend that nothing happened.”
“I do know what happened and I sure as hell am not pretending that what happened to you didn’t,” he said, lips thinning. “Fuck, Sasha. It was all I thought about for years. For years. But it is not what I think about when I see you standing in front of me. It’s not what I—”
“Don’t,” I said, hand up and voice shaking. “I need to leave. Okay? I just need to go.” Without waiting for an answer, I turned around and headed for the front of the house. He called out my name, but I kept walking.
I knew when I got home, when I had a few minutes to really think about what had happened, I was going to want to throat punch myself, but the flight response was in high gear.
The night air rushed to greet me as I stepped out onto the porch, closing the door behind me. I was halfway down the walkway when the door reopened behind me. Hell, he was fast.
“Sasha.”
I kept walking, nearly breaking into a run. I didn’t care. Not like I could be any more embarrassed than I already was. I just had to get out of there.
“Sasha, please stop.” He was only a few steps behind me. “Damn it, don’t run from me again.”
Don’t run from me again.
God, those words hurt, because they were true. That was what I was doing, and I couldn’t seem to stop myself. Grabbing the handle of the truck, I threw open the door. The dome light came on, and it immediately hit me. I staggered back from the open truck, dropping my purse. The smell. Oh God, my stomach immediately revolted. The smell was raw and metallic. Rotten. There was a loud buzzing sound. Flies. I glimpsed brown and white fur matted with red before I whipped around.
Cole stopped at my side. “What the . . .”
Bending over, I placed my hands on my knees and tried not to gag. No luck. My chest and stomach heaved.
He stepped around me and stalked up to the open door. “Holy fuck,” he grunted, and whipped around. A nanosecond later, he grasped my upper arms, forcing me up straight. “I think you need to go back into the house.”
My wide gaze met his as my knees went weak. “What is that in the truck?”
His jaw was locked down, as hard as a diamond. “Let me just get you back in the—”
“What’s in there?” I demanded.
“You don’t—”
I wrenched free, surprising him as I bolted to the right. He grabbed me, circling an arm around my waist, hauling me back against his chest. But it wasn’t quick enough. I saw. A scream rose in my throat, but shock choked it back down, silencing me.
I saw what was in my mother’s truck.
Chapter 9
Pressing my hands over my face, I counted until the urge to vomit all over Cole’s hardwood floors passed. No matter what I did or what I tried to focus on, what I saw in that truck appeared in my mind, in all the gory details.
It reminded me of the only time I hadn’t been in the dark while I was . . . with the Groom. It had been during one of his moods, and he had a lot of them, almost as if he were two separate people. One moment he was almost . . . kind and gentle, as revolting as that still was. Other times he was violent and unpredictable, and breathing would set him off. It had been during that time, after being dragged out of that room to use the restroom, after my face and stomach burned from his fists, he’d shoved me into the room, blindfold off. It was then, as my knees had cracked off the floor, that I learned the lights were controlled from the outside.
He’d turned the lights on then, and it had taken several moments for my eyes to adjust to the brightness, and when they had . . . I’d thought I knew fear. I’d believed that I couldn’t have been terrorized any more than I was.
I’d been so wrong.
I saw everything in flashes, one after another, as if my brain was too overwhelmed to process it all at once.
Rusty red blood had dried in splatters all over the hardwood floor, most likely seeping through the subfloors. There were cuts in the floor, nicks I didn’t understand then. Fresher blood—my blood—was on the bed. And the walls—Oh God—I could still see those walls. Dried blood arced across the section above the bed, and I knew someone had lost their life right there, but it was what hung from the walls across from the bed I’d normally been chained to.
Bloody white wedding gowns.
Six of them.
Something hung from them by a thin piece of wire. Something I couldn’t even begin to process. Something that had taken years for me to accept.
A finger had hung from each dress.
And I knew then I was going to die in that room, like so many others. I’d screamed and screamed until my hoarse voice went out, until—
“Drink this.”
Lowering my hands, I looked up in time to see Cole place a cup of fizzing water on the end table beside the couch. He’d disappeared down the hall for a few moments and had returned with the cup. My hand shook as I reached over and picked up the cool glass. “Thank you.”
He stood there a moment. “We got . . . it out of the truck.”
Shuddering, I started to sip the Alka-Seltzer and then chugged it. The front door opened and I looked up. Through the front windows, blue and red lights flashed. Cole had called the police. I wasn’t exactly sure what the police could do in this situation, but state troopers had showed up about twenty minutes ago.
The trooper walked into the living room, his green uniform starched and pressed. He was an older man who looked like he’d seen weirder shit than what was found in my truck.
He looked over at Cole before speaking. “I have a few questions to ask.”